No, Samsung will not introduce the Galaxy S8 using the Las Vegas CES or the Barcelona MWC that will kick off respectively in January and March 2017. Instead, the Android flagship phone will unveil April next year the sticker price than that of the Galaxy S7.
Citing local media reports from South Korea, BGR reported that the sequel to the GS7 will sell at 20 percent premium or more than $800 per unit. The price hike is due to the increased cost of raw materials and components like display, RAM and storage.
In fact, according to WCCFTech, the price increase is not exclusive to the Galaxy S8. It's highly likely that most flagship smartphones on the pipeline in 2017 will debut bearing sticker price higher by 15 to 20 percent, the report added.
Also, Sammy fans will have to wait a bit longer for the GS8 unboxing as rumors of an earlier rollout in order to offset the impact if the Galaxy Note 7 fiasco seem to be losing traction. BGR said on its report that Samsung is more inclined to pull the cloak off the Galaxy S8 using the company's exclusive event, instead of the usual gadget trade shows.
The Unpacked 2017 by Samsung will likely happen in New York and possibly with a simultaneous similar occasion in Seoul. These events are supposed to happen by April next year, somehow indicating that the actual Galaxy S8 release date is not happening until the following month or May 2017.
However, the reason for the delays in intro and market debut of the GS8 was not mentioned but WCCFTech speculated that it could be due to the reengineering of the next flagship from Samsung. Rumors have it that just like the next iPhone from Apple, the Galaxy S8 will be an all-screen handset that will remove the front-located Home button and most of the physical control keys.
And it's quite possible that Samsung engineers are working to correct the design flaw that supposedly caused the exploding Galaxy Note 7 battery.
On release date, the Galaxy S8 is tipped as the first Android flagship to use Qualcomm's Snapdragon 835 SoC with RAM support of up to 6GB RAM, which is a feature that Samsung recently introduced with the Galaxy C90 Pro.